WAMU 88.5 Contributors

Jonathan Wilson

Environment Reporter

Wilson spent five years working as a local television reporter at stations in Indiana and Arkansas. After growing tired of local TV news, he arrived in the WAMU Newsroom in 2008 as volunteer and quickly realized that working as a public radio reporter was his dream job. Luckily, the bosses at WAMU decided not to crush his dreams and gave him a chance. Now he won’t leave.

Wilson is a graduate of Middlebury College, and received his Masters’ from the Medill School of Journalism. He is a native of Arlington, Virginia, and lives there now with his wife and his daughter.

Articles Written by Jonathan Wilson

Leaders in Lexington, Va. are considering limits on downtown flag-flying, including the Confederate flag, angering defenders of the divisive Southern symbol.Lexington, the city where confederate leaders Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson were buried, may vote tonight on new rules about what flags can be flown on the city's downtown flagpoles.They're considering...

Sales of wines crafted in the state of Virginia are at an all-time high, according to Governor Bob McDonnell.McDonnell told the Associated Press that 462,112 cases of wine were sold in fiscal 2011. That's up 11.4 percent from the 414,785 cases sold in fiscal 2010.The state collected almost $1.8 million in wine liter tax revenue, up from about $1.6 million in fiscal 2010....

Students in Loudoun County's public school system are settling in to the first week of the school year. While many are getting used to new surroundings, new teachers, and new courses, one thing is exactly the same as last year: overcrowded classrooms.The county's population has been exploding for the past few decades, meaning that the Loudoun County public school district is gr...

Virginia was spared the worst of Hurricane Irene, but the commonwealth's most experienced first responders have been active since before the storm even hit.Virginia Task Force 1, the Fairfax County-based search and rescue squad, has had a team on duty for five days already. The team has changed locations twice to help with Hurricane recovery efforts as needed. On Monday the tea...

Even though Virginia was spared the worst of Hurricane Irene, hundreds of thousands of residents are still without power and more flooding could be in store for residents downstate.Gov. Robert McDonnell says that, while the state fared better than expected, some residents still have challenges ahead -- such as two rivers in the Hampton Roads area expected to crest at flood leve...

More than 100,000 customers are without power in northern Virginia, and although some were expecting more damage from Hurricane Irene, those outages could still last for a couple of days.A spokesperson for Dominion Virginia Power says while crews are working to restore power to customers across the state, the utility company is still in the assessment phase, and will remain so ...

The winds have died down enough this morning that Virginia Dominion Power says they have a full crew out restoring power to people in northern Virginia and across the state.Dominion officials are saying that trees could still come down because the ground is saturated and there's more rain expected, which means this could be a multi-day outage for the nearly 120,000 people who h...

Old Town Alexandria often sees the worst flooding during and after major storms.Charlie Lindsey owns an ice cream shop known as The Creamery, located just a block and a half from the Potomac River.He spent much of Friday collecting city-supplied sandbags in case Hurricane Irene pushes the river past its banks."I need about 15 more than I have," Lindsay says. "I ha...

The city manager for Alexandria, Va. has declared a local emergency, making it easier for the city to request assistance from the state.Alexandria is used to dealing with flooding when heavy rains come, but city leaders say Hurricane Irene has the potential to dole out much more than routine conditions.Old Town resident Alan McCurry said he and his wife are planning for ...

Two days after the earthquake the shook the entire east coast, the town of Culpeper, Va. is still surveying the damage to its numerous historic buildings.Town information officer Wally Bunker points to two weathered brick buildings painted blue. They date from the la...

While much of the D.C. area is back to business as usual today after the earthquake, it's not so easy for those closer to the epicenter. The town of Culpeper, Va., located less than 40 miles north of the quake's epicenter, is facing a pretty hefty cleanup.Culpeper is usually a pretty quiet town, but residents here say it's even quieter than usual today.That's because man...

This morning the hundreds of motorcyclists participating in a 9/11 commemoration are leaving the Pentagon and heading to Ground Zero.The ride through the D.C. area has gone remarkably smoothly.The hundreds of riders participating in America's 9/11 Foundation tribute are heading to New York today on the final leg of thei...

The motorcycle tribute to 9/11 victims is making its way through Northern Virginia.This isn't the first ride organized by America's 9/11 foundation, but it is the first time Virginia's State Police felt the need to get involved. Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, 1,800 riders are participating so far, with more expected to join today and tomorrow.Virginia State Police are...

As worries mount over the nation's financial crisis once again, there's no shortage of opinions in the D.C. area about how the government can help fix things. Two groups with starkly opposing points of view rallied at different sites in Virginia yesterday carrying two vastly different messages.D.C. resident Andre Henson, 22, marched with hundreds of other unemployed protesters ...

In Northern Virginia, two groups with very different ideas about the kind of political change the country needs held gatherings today.The ambience inside the Hendry House in Arlington's historic Fort C.F. Smith Park was almost as festive as the members and supporters of the Northern Virginia Tea Party that gathered this afternoon....

The long-running discussion about discipline in Fairfax County's public school system is the motivation behind at least one candidate's decision to run for the school board.The suicide last January of Nick Stuban -- a Woodson H.S. sophomore who was in the midst of disciplinary proceedings at the school -- helped cast a brighter light on the way the district handled students who...

The first day of school is less than two weeks away for students in Loudoun County, and for the hundreds of homeless students, the free food and transportation that go along with the school year could be a relief.
Now, a community health program is aiming to meet other needs of homeless children in the county, both those in school and those who aren't.More than 650 children cur...

A community health program in Loudoun County is expanding its focus to the hundreds of homeless children living there.Inova Loudoun Hospital has operated the 44-foot long mobile health bus in Loudoun County for decades, but this summer, for the first time, the bus will be making regular visits to communities where there are homeless children.Loudoun County public schools...

Leaders in Virginia's Prince William County already have one lawsuit pending against the federal Department of Homeland Security, and now they've filed another.The new lawsuit demands the release of records pertaining to all the undocumented aliens arrested on criminal charges by the county and then turned over to federal immigration agents in the last 4 years.A lawsuit ...

The Wildlife Center of Virginia has released six rehabilitated bald eagles back into the wild this year, contributing to the comeback of the United States' national bird.One of those eagles was released yesterday. From a distance, it's easy to glance at Wildlife Center president Ed Clark and mistake his embrace of the eagle for one of affection.But Clark says his hold is...

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